Bernie’s Plan B

Jim McCall wrote:

Our petition drive for Bernie started in Feb 2015, as independents we knew the laws in many states prohibit write-ins or have paperwork that must be filed ahead of time. So we researched it and made sure we turned our petitions in directly to the state house, to the Attorney General for review of our signers. We got our last approval in Feb 2016, we’re certified in all 50 states for Bernie in November. Here’s what’s left of the webpage we used to centralize information during the process: https://go.berniesanders.com/…/ballot-access-petition-sign-…

Yes. In any state he’s not actually on the ballot, he’s certified as a write in. In all 50 states.
We beat all the sore loser law deadlines, too, even though they rarely apply to presidential candidate we thought it better to be safe than sorry.

I’ve been part of his campaign since a month before he announced, we bugged him for three years. It made the news when we did it, there was mention of the fact that most candidates pay a fee and fill out a party application to be on the ballot, whereas Bernie was petitioned by the citizens in all 50 states. Only DC didn’t make it, he paid the fee and applied as a dem.

He’s a very smart man, and a lifelong independent. He told us early on that beating state deadlines was crucial, we never expected the dems to let us succeed within their party.
We petitioned him without party affiliation in any state that didn’t allow write ins, and we did the sore loser states just to be safe, they don’t usually apply the laws to presidential candidates, but they did it to Gary Johnson in MI, so better safe than sorry. The states that allow write ins all have different rules, some require registration early in the year. We covered those, too.

It’s been a very smart campaign. In our first emails he laid out what he thought would happen. He’s been right at every step, yet succeeded beyond his wildest expectations at the same time. If you google “bernie petition ballot” and any state name you’ll come up with a news story about it in local papers. Didn’t really get any national coverage, it wasn’t news yet. Still won’t be for another month or so, but I assure you it’s the truth. You won’t be able to vote for Bernie as a write-in in some states, but the Green national convention is two weeks after the dem convention, and they’ve been discussing running Bernie. He’s trying to find a path in all 50 states, so far he’s at 43 with 494 electoral in play in those states, enough to win as either write-in or Green. I’ve been assured by the original plan Bernie set out for his campaign that we will have a path to elect him when and if the democrats reject his candidacy, and I have deep faith that this man will not fail us.